Archie Annual #7

History

Pat the Brat arrived in the Archie line under the editorial stewardship of John L. Goldwater and managing editor Harry Shorten, the same team overseeing all of Archie's mid-1950s output. Shorten recognized that staff artist Bob Bolling had a particular facility for drawing children rather than teenagers, and assigned him to work on the Pat the Brat feature — experience that would prove directly foundational when Goldwater greenlit Little Archie the following year. Early story credits across the Pat the Brat material are difficult to pin down, with Bill Woggon also known to have contributed alongside Bolling.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Pat the Brat is cataloged as appearing in Archie Annual #7 (1955), one of the earliest venues in the Archie line for the character.
• Pat the Brat is a young boy — full name Patrick Smith — whose parents are named Oswald (Sam) and Helen/Alice Smith, and whose dog is named Fleabite; the strip follows a short-gag format built entirely around his incorrigible mischief.
• The character was Archie Comics' direct entry into the 'mischievous child' humor genre made commercially dominant by Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace, which by the mid-1950s had expanded from newspaper strips to television and Broadway.
• The Pat the Brat standalone series launched in Summer 1955 (Pat the Brat #1 on-sale June 17, 1955), edited by John L. Goldwater with Harry Shorten as managing editor, published under the Radio Comics Inc. indicia.
• The standalone Pat the Brat series ran four issues quarterly through May 1956, then resumed — with a puzzling gap — at #15 in July 1956 and continued through #33 in July 1959, at which point the numbering was continued by The Adventures of Pipsqueak at #34.
• Bob Bolling, later celebrated as the primary creative force behind Little Archie, cut his teeth on Pat the Brat after editor Harry Shorten decided his draftsmanship was best suited to child characters; that assignment directly led to Bolling designing and writing the first issue of Little Archie in 1956.
• Bill Woggon is also documented as a contributor to the Pat the Brat feature during its early run, though specific story-level credits for the earliest appearances remain difficult to verify.
• Archie Comics revisited the character in a Pat the Brat digest in 1980, and Pat has continued to appear occasionally as filler material in later Archie digest publications.

Cast · 1 character

Full credits